News

While there isn’t necessarily a lot of new information in “MLK/FBI” about the U.S. government’s campaign of harassment and spying on civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Sam Pollard’s documentary hits hard nonetheless.

Pollard (“Mr. Soul!”) weaves together the many facets of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s efforts to discredit King, and as we learn the timeline of these efforts, the film examines them in the context of the bureau’s constant selling of itself to the American public as unassailable good guys. Ultimately, the documentary tells a larger story of how dissent is punished in the United States, and how white power structures perpetually prop themselves up. (Welcome to 2021.)

Pollard and his interview subjects, which include King confidants Andrew Young and Clarence Jones as well as controversial former FBI chief James Comey, walk us through the reams and reams of recently declassified bureau files detailing wiretaps,...

By John M. Whalen

“A Bullet for Joey” (1955) with Edward G. Robinson, George Raft and Audrey Totter is one of those “Red scare” movies from the mid-fifties that combines elements of a crime plot with espionage and the evils of communism. It was the Cold War era and people were digging bomb shelters and practicing “duck and cover” air raid drills, while at the same time, congressional committees hauled in suspected Communist Party members, including actors, writers and directors, to testify and name names. Hollywood did its part, in turn, by black listing suspected commies and turning out anti-communism films like John Wayne’s “Big Jim McClain” “The Woman on Pier 13 (“I Married a Communist”), and “I Was a Communist for the FBI.” “A Bullet for Joey”, despite having two of Hollywood’s toughest tough guy actors in the cast, is one of the weaker examples of this sub-genre.

After she had the heart attack out in Michigan on Thanksgiving 1988, I stood by her bedside in the recovery room and she tried so hard to tell me something, but it just didn't work. I loved her so much. Did she know how much? I never told her. There are always questions you wish you'd asked after it's too late to get an answer. Sometimes years can pass before you realize they're questions.

Everyone said I "took after her," and I did. My features are more rounded than anyone else on either side of my family. Martha R. Stumm was the youngest of six surviving children of a Dutch-Irish-German couple who raised their family on a farm outside Tayorville, Illinois. Years after after her father died and her mother opened a boarding house in Urbana, enough oil was found beneath the land to make it worth drilling.

I visited the...

After she had the heart attack out in Michigan on Thanksgiving 1988, I stood by her bedside in the recovery room and she tried so hard to tell me something, but it just didn't work. I loved her so much. Did she know how much? I never told her. There are always questions you wish you'd asked after it's too late to get an answer. Sometimes years can pass before you realize they're questions.

Everyone said I "took after her," and I did. My features are more rounded than anyone else on either side of my family. Martha R. Stumm was the youngest of six surviving children of a Dutch-Irish-German couple who raised their family on a farm outside Tayorville, Illinois. Years after after her father died and her mother opened a boarding house in Urbana, enough oil was found beneath the land to make it worth drilling.

I visited the...

Greta Garbo, Melvyn Douglas in Ninotchka (top); Barbra Streisand, Robert Redford in The Way We Were (bottom) From the Romanovs’ last stand to Warren Beatty’s first solo directorial effort: On every Wednesday in January 2010, Turner Classic Movies will present the 20-film festival "Shadows of Russia," a showcase of Hollywood movies portraying Russia (and/or the Soviet Union) and the sociopolitical reverberations of Communism throughout the 20th century. Among the scheduled films are classics such as Ninotchka, The Manchurian Candidate, and Reds, in addition to lesser-known fare like Counter-Attack, I Was a Communist for the FBI, and The Strawberry Statement. Get ready for some laughs and a few tears — mostly laughs. And mostly of the unintended kind. I must red-facedly [...]...